George Cosmatos

12:02AM BST 04 May 2005

George Cosmatos, the film director who has died in Victoria, British Columbia, aged 64, was responsible for Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985).

Cosmatos was widely regarded in the industry as an efficient, if uninspired, craftsman of action pictures; but none of his other work was to have the cultural resonance of Rambo, which became a symbol of the resurgence of American national pride during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

The film was a sequel to the well-received First Blood (1982), a study of the disillusion felt by returning Vietnam veteran John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone). Scripted by Stallone and James Cameron, Rambo was initially intended as an examination of the soldier's feelings when plunged once more into combat with the Viet Cong, but in the hands of Cosmatos it became an undeniably spectacular but hollow assault on America's enemies - chief among them the Soviet baddie (Steven Berkoff) and Rambo's own superiors, deemed to have betrayed the cause. "Do we get to win this time?" asks Rambo, and of course he does.

The movie poured balm on an American self-esteem bruised by defeats in south-east Asia and Iran, and was seized on by Reagan as embodying his aggressive stance against the Empire of Evil. "After seeing Rambo last night," he told the American public, "I know what to do next time." The success of the film catapulted Stallone into the first rank of Hollywood stardom, and paved the way for a slew of ever more violent pictures which featured such American heroes as Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

George Pan Cosmatos was born in Florence, Italy, on January 4 1941. Of Greek parentage, he grew up in Egypt and Cyprus, and was reputed to speak five languages. After studying film in London, he cut his teeth as assistant director to Otto Preminger on Exodus (1960), Leon Uris's epic about the birth of Israel. Thereafter he worked on Zorba the Greek (1964), in which Cosmatos had a small part as Boy with Acne.

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After steering various European productions such as Rappresaglia (Reprisal, 1973) - the story of the wartime massacre by the Nazis of more than 300 prisoners in Rome, and featuring Richard Burton and Marcello Mastroianni - Cosmatos came to wider notice with The Cassandra Crossing (1976), which he scripted and directed. The film was, for admirers of the genre, one of the high spots of the decade's appetite for disaster movies. The setting was a luxury train menaced by terrorists and - for good measure - a deadly virus. Those in peril included Sophia Loren, Martin Sheen and Richard Harris.

Cosmatos followed this with a war film fondly remembered by boys of a certain age, Escape to Athena (1979), which starred Roger Moore, Telly Savalas, Stefanie Powers and, regrettably, David Niven, in a piece of action hokum set in Greece.

After Rambo, Cosmatos teamed up again with Stallone to make the thick-eared but otherwise undistinguished Cobra (1986), and at the end of the 1980s directed Leviathan, essentially an underwater version of Alien.

Entirely out of keeping with the rest of his oeuvre was the last major picture to carry his name, the Western Tombstone (1993). The film, which told the story of the celebrated gunfight at the OK Corral, had a troubled history, and Cosmatos was drafted in to replace Kevin Jarre, who had written the original story for Rambo. His arrival was not warmly welcomed by many of the cast, already feeling the pressure of knowing that Kevin Costner was busy shooting a rival version of the tale, Wyatt Earp.

To near-universal surprise, Cosmatos turned out one of the finest cowboy movies since the 1960s, and drew a career-best performance from Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday. The film played well at the box-office, and entirely overshadowed Costner's offering.

George Cosmatos was a somewhat gruff man with strong opinions. "What's with these prejudiced people?" he said in response to criticism of Rambo. "They're for censorship, not a free society. It's a psychological release for people to have a hero who can do the fighting and dirty work while we eat our popcorn." When he was not filming, he had a great passion for rare books and good cigars. He had been suffering from lung cancer for some time.

George Cosmatos died on April 19. His wife Birgitta predeceased him, and he is survived by a son.